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ICC CHAMPIONS TROPHY

June 6, 2017

Kane Williamson

Cardiff Wales Stadium, Cardiff

England won by 87 runs

Q. 150-odd for 2 after 30, did you feel that you had a good chance in that chase?
KANE WILLIAMSON: Yeah, I mean I think we gave ourselves the best chance, but we still knew that starting on that surface was very difficult.

So it would have been nice for Ross and myself to be able to take it further and maybe sort of bring it down to that 10 an over mark where anything can happen. A credit to the way England bowled. They got a lot out of the surface. They bowled a very good area, very consistent, and made life difficult for us with the bat.

Q. Do you think the surface changed between the two innings, or did England just bowl a little bit more to get more out of it?
KANE WILLIAMSON: I think it changed a little bit. But certainly England bowled very, very well. Maybe changed just a fraction but the way they extracted it by cross seamers hitting the wicket hard. They're all big lads, and they pretty much hit that sort of maybe six-metre length and created a little of variability out of the surface and didn't give us much at all, to be fair.

So a lot of credit to the way they bowled and operated on that surface to extract what they did out of it.

Q. It felt like your own dismissal was pretty key to England's victory there. Could you talk us through it because you seemed quite frustrated -- looked back at the pitch and stuff -- could you talk us through from your perspective what happened?
KANE WILLIAMSON: Yeah, bounced a bit more than I expected and hit my glove. It happens. It's a bit frustrating, because we were getting a little bit of momentum with the bat. But, yeah, I guess those things happen and you let them go and move on.

But, like I said, once again, the way that the English bowled, was very consistent into that, I guess, sort of short of a length area which made life quite tough to score.

Q. What about the bowl? There was a bowl before where I think Ross went to play a forward defensive and it popped up and got him on the head. I mean, how difficult as a batsman is it out there to kind of put that out of your mind and kind of focus on playing normally when the pitch does that?
KANE WILLIAMSON: I mean, you sort of try and rely on the fact that it won't happen a lot and that you have very good helmets. But I think the way he bounced back from that and got into strong positions was very good.

I think if we take it back to the start of the game, I suppose at the halfway point we certainly thought we had a sniff. But we did think that it was perhaps an above par total. But the way that the English contributed throughout that innings meant that they bat very deep, they were able to get a good score on the board.

And you could sort of see signs that if you did hit a length hard that you could get a little bit out of the surface and that the English obviously saw that and exploited that very well.

Q. And obviously you won the toss and put England in. That seems to be the way of 50-over cricket generally. Is today perhaps a lesson that that's not necessarily just the easiest of things to do?
KANE WILLIAMSON: Yeah. I think both teams are looking to have a bowl first with the weather around. And there was, we thought, enough grass on the surface to perhaps make it consistent.

And it is always interesting the way you adapt when you see how a surface plays, how you adapt in the second innings once you've learned a little bit from it. And I think it was a big part of England's success today.

They saw the way, obviously the way they played but the way we bowled on it. And I thought we did a pretty good job with the bowl. But they certainly stepped it up, learned from the way we operated and did it that much better and made batting quite difficult.

Q. Just the over-rate for your innings, that was a bit slow and --
KANE WILLIAMSON: What was it? I knew it was -- I was under the pump for a while there.

Q. Could you talk us through when you're looking at that? And are you nervous about implications that could be for you, I guess, as the team?
KANE WILLIAMSON: I'm just going to avoid the umpires for a couple of days, see if they can track me down. I don't know what's going to happen. Hopefully there might have been a number of things that might have helped us out a little bit during that innings. Fingers crossed.

I'm not sure what will come of it. We're certainly trying our best. But it kept sort of getting away from us a little bit, especially when you're under pressure and the batsmen are trying to take you down. Look, I don't know at this stage, but I'm sure we'll be having a chat at some point.

Q. You've seen a lot of good bowlers out of the world. What about Mark Wood? He had a good out today. What do you make of him as a bowler?
KANE WILLIAMSON: He's a very good bowler, unique in the fact that he bowls at such good pace, off maybe a five-metre, 10-metre run-up, which you don't see too much around the world. And he's performed very, very well for England over a period of time, especially coming back after injury on very good surfaces. So certainly a strength of their bowling attack.

Checked by Wisden

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